Can't Stand The Rezillos : The (Almost) Complete Rezillos.
CD Album. America. 1993. 9 26942-2

By all accounts, Scotland's first great contribution to rock'n'roll was Lonnie Donnegan, the banjo strumming superstar of skiffle (the genial adaptation of American jug band music and blues that was all the rage in the late 50's) who provided an influential role model for countless young musicians, including the embryonic Beatles. After that, however, Scotland settled back into the musical mulch, a condition only sporadically alleviated by such notables as Lulu, Alex Harvey and the Bay City Rollers.

Then came punk. Coalescing a vast reservoir of youthful ennui, kitschy self-amusement, manic energy and what-the-fuck enthusiasm, bands rose up everywhere - skeletons awakening from a cultural dirt nap to find guitars, amps and drums awaiting. By 1978, Scots were up to their Tartan Tams in homegrown talent like The Skids, Zones, FingerPrintz, Jolt and Simple Minds. But somebody had to be first, to switch on the power and get the era into gear. That somebody was the Rezillos.

In the fall of 1975, Eugene Reynolds and Jo (John) Callis rounded up several classmates from Edinburgh Art College and formed the Knutsford Dominators to play covers of R&B and rock'n'roll standards at parties. Callis handled guitars and vocals, while Reynolds was, at the outset, one of the two drummers. That lineup didn't last, and neither did the group. After slimming down to a quartet, the Dominators vanished in the spring.

But its core stuck together and soon recruited a new combo, which they dubbed the Rezillos. Having ceded the drum throne to Angel Patterson, Reynolds had become a singer, using the handle Luke Warm, Callis shared guitar duties with Hi-Fi Harris. Vocalist Fay Fife (real name Sheilagh Hynde ; original occupation fashion/design student) bassist D.K. Smythe, saxophonist William Mysterious and backup singer Gail Warning completed the lineup, which contrary to prevalent punk impatience - spent most of 1976 rehearsing before making its live debut on November 5th, a fortnight prior to 'Anarchy In The UK'.

The Rezillos mixed an amused appreciation for all things B-movie wonderful and junky (songs like 'Leader Of The Pack', the Sweet's glam rocking 'Ballroom Blitz' and the Dave Clarke 5's venerable ' Glad All Over' were in their repertoire) with a dose of comic book sc-fi imagination and a pop art fashion sense straight out of a bad trip on Carnaby Steet. In other words, they looked as great as they sounded - even if they were rank amateurs. As Fife later remarked 'We were never serious about being musicians' It didn't matter a fig. Like other great zealots of trash( the B-52's and The Cramps, f'rinstance), The Rezillos, possesed the deeply inbred spirit of rock'n'roll and a very modern sense of fun-über-alles that was worth inestimably more than a thousand hours of practice.

These missionaries of new wave faith began spreading the gospel around Scotland, playing 200 (!) gigs over the following year. By the summer of '77 vinyl finally beckoned through the agency of one Lenny Love, a local Island Records employee with indie label ambitions of his own. The Rezillos inaugurated Love's fledgling Sensible Records in August with what appears to have been (beating the Valves by a month) Scotlands first new wave single (FAB 1): 'I Can't Stand My Baby' (written, as were nearly all the bands originals, by Callis) b/w an uptempo version of the Beatles already uptempo 'I Wanna Be Your Man'.

In September the Rezillos supported the Stanglers at the Glasgow Apollo before a crowd (their largest to date) of 3,500. The group had already attracted some A&R interest from various companies, but their performance that night evidently convinced Sire to make it's move. The Rezillos became the first U.K. band directly signed to the punk friendly American label.

Between that deal and ushering in the new year, the Rezillos became a five piece (Harris, Smythe and Warning left; William Mysterious took over on bass), released a Sire single - '(My Baby Does) Good Scultpures' b/w 'Flying Sacucer Attack' - that had been intended as thier second Sensible 45, and did a short (and reportedly unhappy) U.K. tour with the Ramones. Following the holidays, the Rezillos packed off to New York to record their debut album.

Nick Lowe and Chris Spedding had been approached about producing the disc, but New York's Tony Bongiovi - whose work with the Ramones and Talking Heads made him a culture hero long before his cousin Jon - got the assignment. While illness forced him to tagteam production with engineer Bob Clearmountain, the quintet spent February working at Power Station, emerging only to play a show at CBGB.

Can't Stand The Rezillos (the release of which was delayed for months by business affairs) combines the band's fine madness with such righteous covers as 'Gladd All Over', Freddie and the Dreamers' magically drippy 'I Like It' and 'Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight', a 1959 B-side by Earl Vince and the Valiants (aka Fleetwood Mac).Despite Paterson's peppy drumming and Callis' rough guitar attack, however, the album is a bit outside punk, a loose interpretation of the 60's more than a refutation of the 70's.

Mysterious had vanished after the March '78 tour in what Reynolds would only describe as a flying saucer attacks, and Simon Templar (not the Saint, just a bloke with the same stage name) had become the Rezillo's new bassist. Backed by a track '20,000 Rezillos Under The Sea', the new lineup debuted with a 45 remake of the album's 'Top Of The Pops' (not the Kink's song, just a tune with the same name) that arrived in the U.K. shops in July, the same month as Can't Stand The Rezillos.

The group did a tour headlining over the Undertones and released a wonderful single ('Destination Venus' b/w 'Mystery Action') in November, but there was trouble on Rezilloville. Diverging musical interests set Fife and Reynolds at odds with the other three, and the group decided to call it a career.

But first there had to be a farewell gig. On December 23, 1978, the Rezillos returned to Glasgow Apollo, joined for the event by Gail Warning and William Mysterious (back on sax). The full tilt rave included such previously uncut covers as 'Ballroom Blitz', 'Land Of A Thousand Dances', and the Kinks' 'I Need You' alongside a complement of Rezillos classics, all of which was documented on a live album entitled Mission Accomplished...But The Beat Goes On . And that, as they say, was that.

Fife and Reynolds went on to form the not-altogether-different-sounding Revillos with old chum Hi-Fi Harris and a trio of backup singers called the Revettes. After two albums, the Revillos disbanded in 1985. Reynolds tinkered with antique motorcylces and later formed a band Planet Pop; Fife worked in film production, wrote screenplays, acted on stage and took a post-graduate degree.

After the Rezillos ended Callis kept right on rocking. Along with Paterson and Templar, he formed Shake and released a 10-inch EP and one 45 on Sire in the U.K.; in early 1981 he joined Human League ( a group with whom the Rezillos had once shared management) and co-wrote such worldwide hits as 'Don't You Want Me''.

Following Shake, Templar played in the Flowers and then released Boots For Dancing, and obscure outfit in which Paterson and Callis had briefly figured. Paterson formed TV21, who made a poppy album (A Thin Red Line) in 1981, and later reunited with Callis to form S.W.A.L.K., a glitter rock quintet that lasted for one 1985 EP.

While other groups - from Simple Minds to Big Country to The Jesus and Mary Chain to Teenage Fanclub - have gone on to greater and more enduring international fame, the Rezillos remained a proud chapter in the annals of Scottich rock'n'roll history. Their records, which reek of the joyous anything-goes atmosphere, in which they were created, are just as entertaining now as then, and doubtedly twisted some impressionable minds along the way. Mission accomplished. Over and Out.

Ira Robbins
New York City
February 1993